Finally made a trip to the range with the 513T I picked up a couple months ago at my friendly neighborhood LGS. Remington made the 513's from 1940 through 1968. The 'T' variant was set up for target shooting- Redfield sights, 27" heavy semi-floated bbl, heavy American walnut stock, beavertail forend, solid sling swivels. Many were made on contract circa WWII for Uncle Sam and supplied to wartime ROTC and DCM programs. Would have been cool to find a govt. issue rifle, but mine is just the civvie version. Nothing particularly fancy, it's just a well made and solid target platform.
I was a little reluctant to buy it at first. Hanging on the wall, there were some runs on the finish evident on its underside- looked like someone used paint thinner to clean it and forgot to wipe some off. There were a couple scratches on the stock and the vintage sling had many deep scratches. Took a look at the bore and didn't like what I saw- dark, dirty, maybe showing some frosting. Not really my standard for rifle care. A few weeks later I had not found anything I liked and came back with a fair offer that gave me some cover in case the bore would not clean up.
As they say, some things just clean up well. A little elbow grease, bore paste, and #9 revealed a mirror bright bore with sharp rifling. Rest of the rifle looked pretty good after some cleaning & the runs on the bottom of the stock look better after appying some oil.
[/URL][/IMG]
[/URL][/IMG]
The rear sight was missing its insert, so upon advice from here picked up an adjustable Gehmann iris. New mags are still available, so I had some extras delivered and finally went out see how she runs with some standard velocity CCI 22LR. The action is ok- not terrible but not awesome either. Temps at the range Sat AM were mid 30's and the oil I used was getting a bit thick, so I'll hold final opinions on the action until later. These have a reputation for having a mediocre trigger & I concur. Despite that, this thing is a damn fine shooter:
[/URL][/IMG]
Note the Lee Shaver front globe sight inserts from Brownells. I'll do a separate write up for those as I'm impressed with the product. The target is a NRA A-17 with a 0.15" diameter 10-ring (no room for the x-ring, LOL). Official distance is 50 feet but I shot at 25 yards. Once sighted in I shot an OK .230" five shot one-hole group above. I also shot a string of six individual targets and was able to at least touch the 10-ring for half of the 6 shots and was on the 9-ring for the rest.
In conclusion, this old school 22LR target horse still has legs and after a little clean up looks good too. In my humble opinion, it's only a good trigger away from being a phenomenal shooter. Now, what to do about that trigger...
I was a little reluctant to buy it at first. Hanging on the wall, there were some runs on the finish evident on its underside- looked like someone used paint thinner to clean it and forgot to wipe some off. There were a couple scratches on the stock and the vintage sling had many deep scratches. Took a look at the bore and didn't like what I saw- dark, dirty, maybe showing some frosting. Not really my standard for rifle care. A few weeks later I had not found anything I liked and came back with a fair offer that gave me some cover in case the bore would not clean up.
As they say, some things just clean up well. A little elbow grease, bore paste, and #9 revealed a mirror bright bore with sharp rifling. Rest of the rifle looked pretty good after some cleaning & the runs on the bottom of the stock look better after appying some oil.
The rear sight was missing its insert, so upon advice from here picked up an adjustable Gehmann iris. New mags are still available, so I had some extras delivered and finally went out see how she runs with some standard velocity CCI 22LR. The action is ok- not terrible but not awesome either. Temps at the range Sat AM were mid 30's and the oil I used was getting a bit thick, so I'll hold final opinions on the action until later. These have a reputation for having a mediocre trigger & I concur. Despite that, this thing is a damn fine shooter:
Note the Lee Shaver front globe sight inserts from Brownells. I'll do a separate write up for those as I'm impressed with the product. The target is a NRA A-17 with a 0.15" diameter 10-ring (no room for the x-ring, LOL). Official distance is 50 feet but I shot at 25 yards. Once sighted in I shot an OK .230" five shot one-hole group above. I also shot a string of six individual targets and was able to at least touch the 10-ring for half of the 6 shots and was on the 9-ring for the rest.
In conclusion, this old school 22LR target horse still has legs and after a little clean up looks good too. In my humble opinion, it's only a good trigger away from being a phenomenal shooter. Now, what to do about that trigger...
Last edited:
